This chart from a leaked letter to investors reveals how staggering Uber's growth is

A leaked letter to investors from Uber reveals the company's
expansion in China is going very, very well.

In the letter, first
obtained by The Financial Times, Travis Kalanick asks
investors for more cash to fund further expansion in the country.
To back up his appeal, he provides some stunning metrics on just
how fast the ride-sharing service is growing.

Four of Uber's 10 most popular cities are now in China, with
Guanghzhou, Hangzhou, and Chengdu taking the top three spots. And
cities are seeing far, far faster growth than launches
did in equivalent cities around the world in the same timeframe.
Nine months after launch, Uber is enjoying 479times more trips in Chengdu than it saw in New York
after the same length of time.

A graph included in the letter best illustrates just how meteoric
Uber's rise in China has been:

Uber

The above graph plots the number of monthly trips against months
since launch for various cities across the globe. Red lines are
Chinese cities, and blue lines are everywhere else. It shows a
growth within the country unlike anything Uber has seen anywhere
else in the world.

Even new cities not in China aren't enjoying similar levels of
growth. The short lighter blue lines indicate newer non-Chinese
cities, and while they are growing faster than earlier
launches did, it's still nowhere on the same level.

Of course, it hasn't all been plain sailing for Uber in China. In
May,
its Guangzhou offices were raided by the police. And drivers
have previously been fined, and even had their vehicles
confiscated, as the company disrupts the largely state-owned
established taxi industry.

But the scale of the growth Uber is seeing makes it clear why the
company isn't being put off. Kalanick says that "to put it
frankly, China represents one of the largest untapped
opportunities for Uber, potentially larger than the US."